Free My Weirdest School #2 by Dan Gutman

My name is A.J. and I hate it when my school gets attacked by monsters.
    I should explain.
    It all started the other day when our new teacher, Mr. Cooper, came flying into the room. And I do mean flying ! Mr. Cooper thinks he’s a superhero. But he’s not a very good one, because he knocked overthe garbage can and fell on the floor. Stuff spilled all over the place.
    We all ran over to help him up. Mr. Cooper had a black plastic bag in his hand and a letter A on his cape.
    â€œIt is I,” he announced. “Apple Man!”
    â€œApple Man?” asked Ryan and Michael.
    â€œWhoever heard of a superhero named Apple Man?” asked Alexia, who rides a skateboard all the time.
    â€œToday we’re going to learn about apples,” said Mr. Cooper.
    â€œWhy?” asked Neil, who we call the nude kid even though he wears clothes.
    â€œBecause it’s part of the Common Core!” said Mr. Cooper. “Get it?”
    Nobody got it. But Mr. Cooper didn’t care. He took some apples out of the bag and passed them around.
    â€œWhen I was a kid, we used to say ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away,’” Mr. Cooper told us.

    â€œYou threw apples at doctors?” I asked. Then everybody laughedeven though I didn’t say anything funny.
    â€œDid you know there are seven thousand kinds of apples grown all over the world?” Mr. Cooper asked us. “But only one is native to North America—the crabapple.” *
    â€œI know something about apples,” said Andrea Young, this annoying girl with curly brown hair. “If you put an apple in water, it won’t sink. Apples have a lot of air in them.”
    â€œVery good, Andrea!” said Mr. Cooper.
    Andrea fist-bumped her friend Emily, the big crybaby. Then she smiled the smile that she smiles to let everybody know thatshe knows something nobody else knows. She thinks she is so smart. Why can’t a truck full of apples fall on her head?
    Mr. Cooper told us it was time for math.
    â€œIf there are six apples on a table and you take away four of them, how many do you have?” Mr. Cooper asked.
    Andrea was waving her hand in the air like she needed to be rescued from a desert island.
    â€œTwo apples!” she said. “Because six minus four is two.” Then she made her smiley smile again.
    â€œNo,” said Mr. Cooper. “If there are six apples on a table and you take away four of them, you have four of them, of course.You just took four of them away!”
    â€œB-but . . . but . . .”
    We all laughed because Andrea said “but,” which sounds like “butt” even though it only has one t .
    Ha-ha! Ha-ha! Nah-nah-nah boo-boo on Andrea.
    Mr. Cooper taught us lots of interesting stuff about apples. Did you know that gravity was discovered when an apple fell on some guy’s head? Me neither.
    That’s when the most amazing thing in the history of the world happened. The morning announcements came over the loudspeaker.
    Well, that’s not the amazing part,because the morning announcements come over the loudspeaker every morning. The amazing part was what happened after that.
    I’m not going to tell you what it was.
    Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.
    But you have to read the next chapter. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you.

Our school secretary, Mrs. Patty, does the announcements every morning. We pledge the allegiance, and then she tells us the weather, what’s for lunch, and who has birthdays that day. It’s pretty boring.
    At the end of today’s announcements, Mrs. Patty said, “All students and teachers,please report to the all-purpose room for a surprise assembly.”
    We had to walk single file a million hundred miles to the all-purpose room. Mr. Cooper made us sit boy-girl-boy-girl so we wouldn’t sit next to anybody we liked. I had to sit between Andrea and Emily.
    Our principal, Mr. Klutz, climbed up on the stage. He has no hair at all. I mean